


safe as houses

by thecanaryfalls



Category: Leverage
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Nightmares, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-20
Updated: 2015-03-20
Packaged: 2018-03-18 17:31:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3577956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecanaryfalls/pseuds/thecanaryfalls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Parker and Hardison comfort Eliot, in their weird multimillionare-convicted-felons-who-are-planning-a-life-with-him kind of way.</p><p>Set right around The Rundown Job.</p>
            </blockquote>





	safe as houses

They all fall asleep in the office above the brew pub, which has been happening more and more these days. Parker and Hardison are on the couch with only their feet touching, and Eliot is slumped in one of the big chairs, between the other two and the door. The job is done, but he’d been too bruised and tired to bother getting home.

Eliot sleeps only ninety minutes a night. That too is a bald-faced lie.

\---

He wakes up drenched in sweat, heart pounding, adrenaline flooding his system. It’s slightly too light to still be the middle of the night. He locks his muscles in place until his heartbeat can slow and his breathing steadies, but the sharp horror in his stomach doesn’t dissipate. Just look at them, he tells himself. They’re there. They’re fine.

There’s just enough dim gray light for him to see Parker’s pale skin in the darkness, her face turned to him. She’s still and silent. He sighs heavily, so she can hear it, and pushes his damp hair out of his face as he slouches back into the chair, turning away again. He still wants to throw up, but it’s an emotional response, not a physical need. When the sun comes up a little more he’ll disappear into the kitchen downstairs. 

Parker gets up, silent as a mouse, and pads over to his chair, where she settles on the floor at his feet and leans up against his leg. It’s so unlike her to sit on the ground that Eliot looks down and meets her eyes in the darkness. “I’m fine,” he says gently. “Go back to sleep.”

Parker smiles, maybe, he can’t tell, but she turns her face away from him and just sits there, still, her weight pressing warm against his leg.

They stay there for a while, until Eliot’s heartbeat feels strong and smooth again and he realizes that he can see more than just Parker’s white-blonde hair. Morning always helps.

\---

“I used to get caught,” Parker says quietly into the heavy air, like she’s been trying to get it out for a while. “To get stuck in things. Cobwebby stuff or straps or something. But these days I’m just… too slow. I’m slow and when they catch me I fight back but I… I can’t hurt anyone, because my hands are too slow.” She pauses, takes an audible breath. “And now I have to be somewhere, I _have_ to, but all the minutes are falling out in front of me and I can tell already that I’ll be too late, I’ll be… too slow, even if I got away right this minute.”

“It changed?” asks Eliot, quietly, just to say something back. He knows that was hard for her to get out.

She nods, and he can see the movement of her head clearly now, her messy hair moving back and forth against his knee. Then, after another hesitation, “Did yours change?”

“Yeah,” he sighs. 

“Something happens to us?” prompts Hardison from the couch, and Eliot jolts, because apparently the adrenaline isn’t totally out of his system and his situational awareness is shot to hell. He wants to growl at Hardison, but something about Parker’s body weight is dragging him down towards the truth instead, so he doesn’t say anything. 

“Mine are just panic,” Hardison offers, flopping over onto his stomach on the couch, and it’s still too dark to see his expression when Eliot looks over at him. “Just a big cloud of panic and nothin to get me out. I don’t know what that means, man. Just noise.”

“That sucks,” says Parker quietly, after a moment.

Hardison flops over onto his back again and rearranges his arms. “Sometimes I dream about bein’ in that damn coffin.” 

They lapse into silence for a few minutes.

“One time…” Hardison says, very quietly, to the ceiling, “I had this dream that I sent you all into a warehouse, and I just hear the comms go out. That’s all.” He’s silent for a second, and in a strangled voice, says, “That’s the worst one I ever had.”

“ _Jesus_ , man,” Eliot spits out, sitting up hard enough to jostle Parker. “Look, I dream that we have to burn the office, burn all the aliases, and I don’t know where the team is. Okay? I’m somewhere and I don’t know where you are.”

He can feel them looking at him in the weak gray light, can feel Parker’s laser-focused attention from where she continues to stubbornly press her body against him. He realizes they’re waiting. That they don’t believe that of all the things he’s done, his nightmares would be something like that.

“I _leave_ ,” he spits out, there, there’s the sour pit in his stomach. “I’m just somewhere alone because I leave. I don’t know where you are or what happened to you or if you’re alive or dead because I _run_ , okay?” He consciously unclenches his fists and takes a slow, queasy breath, as quietly as he can. “Every time I make the same decision, and then I end up standing in a stupid shopping mall or something, ready to throw up.”

“That’s dumb,” says Parker slowly, a little gently. “Mine are dumb too, but not that dumb. Alec’s make the most sense.”

Hardison snorts. “Thanks a lot, babe.” Then he levers his long body off the couch, his white t-shirt bright in the darkness, and comes over to sit on the floor with Parker and leans against the chair. Eliot sits still, waiting, waiting for the condemnation he knows isn’t coming and the platitudes he half-expects, but they don’t seem to be interested in tackling the sour pit of guilt in his stomach. _That’s dumb._

\---

“There’s this great place in Paris,” Hardison says quietly into the still dark air, once he’s settled. Parker sort of tucks her head against his clavicle, and Eliot can feel her relax against his leg. “Lots of sun, _great_ architectural details, the whole deal. The kitchen’s from a late-2000's reno and trust me, the people who did it knew things about food I can’t even imagine. There’s this like… famous pastry place or something on the same block, I dunno. Eliot will know.” 

His voice trails off, and in the silence Eliot hears the first bird make an undignified cry. After a while a few more join in, and it starts to sound something like birdsong.

“There’s a nice place in Hong Kong, too,” Hardison murmurs. “Third floor in this old building, with a youth hostel on the ground floor. Probably loud as hell at night but it’s in a really cool part of town, and it has this amazing rooftop pool. I couldn't pass it up. More of a short trip kinda place, though. I don’t want to live over a youth hostel for long. And I got one in St. Petersburg that has, like, artist-studio skylights.”

“I thought the plan was New York,” Eliot finally scowls, opening his eyes, letting the Parisian kitchen dissipate. “If we have to go to ground we meet again at that stupid bagel place in New York.”

Hardison looks up at him, features finally starting to be visible. His forehead is furrowed. “Dude, what if we had to lay low for a while? You thought we’d split up again?”

“I got safe houses,” Eliot replies, exasperated. “Plenty for all of us, but not together. Five people together are conspicuous.” They’re unmemorable apartments sprinkled around the country and paid in full. If they ever have to go to deep ground he’ll give them each a key and an address and make sure they’re safe, and six months later they’ll cautiously meet in New York City. _That’s_ going to ground. Not an architectural marvel in the Fourth Arrondissement.

The expression on Hardison’s face is now clearly indignation. “Wow, man. The trust in my skills, I’m touched, thanks a lot. Spend an age running cash through sixteen shell companies and two separate dudes with briefcases of cash—both named Aidan—and I get this. You bought us individual studio apartments in states I forget exist.”

“There’s different levels of burning,” Eliot snaps at him. “If it’s the FBI we can move to Paris, Sophie’ll love that. Or down the block. But there are people who want our damn _heads_ , Hardison. If one of them comes after us you’re going to have to _trust me_ and go to _ground._ ”

Hardison slides back down against the chair, and says, sideways, “Sophie and Nate have their own plans, y’know.”

“I know,” sighs Eliot. Nate’s been hinting at that.

“I have a real burner place, for just us. An apocalypse place. If things ever got that bad. Nate doesn’t even know about it.”

“What?” says Parker, sitting up. “You don’t trust _Nate?”_

“It’s not that,” mutters Hardison. “It’s just… there are different levels of safe houses, and this one’s the top level. The if-this-one-goes-south-I-don’t-care-what-happens level. You don’t tell _anyone_ about the apocalypse house.”

“Why are you telling us?” she asks.

Hardison kisses the top of her head. “C’mon, woman.”

“Why are you tellin' me,” Eliot echoes, but he knows the answer. He finally mutters, “Probably needs a security overhaul. You’re good at the money and tech but you never think about shit like sight lines.”

“It’s in South Africa,” Hardison says after a beat, his voice soft and low like he’s telling a bedtime story. “Little tiny peninsula in a lake area, out in the hills. I’ve been working on it for years, slow and careful. Cash only, work overseen by a local. I gently suggested to the big gossip in town that it’s a retreat for my mistress.” He's smirking a little, and Eliot can just _see_ him overselling it. “Once in a while I’ll fly over in a stolen seat to add explosives, or bring a pallet of satellite phones. It’s way out in the country.”

“What kind of town?” Eliot prods, voice low.

“A one-general-store kind of town. Everyone grew up there. New people’ll be noticed and talked about, but that means anyone asking after us will be too. No surprises. And outside that it’s a lot of long roads to anything else.”

“What’s the house like?” asks Parker, and Eliot can hear her voice getting fuzzy. She can sleep anywhere, like a cat. Even draped on a cold floor, sandwiched between Hardison’s shoulder and Eliot’s leg.

“It’s not big,” Hardison tells her. “I put in a pantry, though, for the long haul, if we needed it. Made you up a pretty good kitchen, Eliot. Best I could do without bringing in really high-end appliances, but it’s stocked with stuff the internet says is best. I went on, like, restaurant supply forums.”

Eliot genuinely smiles at that, but it’s fine, Hardison’s not looking at him, so he grunts a little. Then he leans back and closes his eyes, just for a minute. The sun’s starting to turn things pink instead of gray.

“It’s beautiful, man,” Hardison murmurs. “It’s cold in the morning and you get frost, right, and the sun burns it off the grass so everything’s all misty. And there are these hills in the distance. So many birds, and they move in these big flocks—I was jet-lagged,” he adds, a little defensively, as if to justify looking out a window. “At night the sky's like a damn planetarium. And there’s this big wooden table out front, under an awning thing, you can just sit out there for hours and watch the water. We could grow flowers on it. Maybe we’ll start em in the fall.” 

“Better be something local that don't need water or weeding,” Eliot mumbles, already half-asleep.

“Sure, man,” Hardison says gently, and tips his head against Eliot’s knee.

 


End file.
